


My Iron Lung

by unethicalcoffee



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 14:55:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1161011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unethicalcoffee/pseuds/unethicalcoffee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The silence makes her uneasy at first; then, after several minutes of semi-calculated maneuvering, her sister’s form becomes visible in the dim morning glow. She sleeps, her lips parted (somehow not inelegantly), a blanket strewn haphazardly beside her, a book slipping steadily from her fingers. Anna not only realises that this is the first time she has looked so forwardly at her sister in nine years, but also that they’re only six feet apart. She forgets how to breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Iron Lung

Feet squelching in the morning dew and fingers caked in mud, Princess Anna descends without ease and without grace from the great oak tree in which she has made a home away (and yet not so far away) from home. She gives her skirts a lazy, noncommittal brush with the backs of her fingers, which hitch from time to time in some small and some larger tears, and pulls them up and out of her feet’s path. Her bare skin ghosts through fresh grass, light as if on air, and with the glee of spring’s awakening on her side, Anna is both foolish and daring enough to try her hand at scaling the castle walls.

Needless to say, this is not a common occurrence. Princess Anna has never tried to break into her own home until now, but of course she has never before had incentive to do so. Only moments ago, gazing sleepily at the sunrise from the arms of her dear tree, was motive given her as, easing its way from the window across the garden, a sweet, melancholy voice had begun on its way to the morning sun and stopped short at her ears. The princess had assumed awakeness with a now ardent curiosity, turning her head to face the song, her heartbeat picking up perhaps with the knowledge of whose it _had_ to be. A skylark called softly from above her, and the other voice seemed to harmonise; Anna’s chest fluttered helplessly at the sight of her sister, who was still only seventeen but weathered enough to look womanly even from a distance, and tumbled at least five branches closer to the ground.

Still, this hardly seems like reason enough to begin climbing the walls instead of taking the door, and Anna is willing to admit that she has nothing to say in her own defence. When filled to the brim with longing and anticipation, what’s a girl to do? It is almost as though her arms and legs, heavenly messengers with earthly designs, are so permeated with emotion (and a fair share of naivety) that they are suddenly able to harness her strength of mind and deliver her body to its destination. By the time Anna’s fingers curl around the windowsill she is no less invigorated than before.

But in her elated state, time has flown, and Elsa with it. Anna finds herself in the library, and a chair catches her before her wet feet can trip her up. From then on she treads carefully, weaving her way amongst endless rows of books ancient and modern, on subjects bland and boisterous. The silence makes her uneasy at first; then, after several minutes of semi-calculated maneuvering, her sister’s form becomes visible in the dim morning glow. She sleeps, her lips parted (somehow not inelegantly), a blanket strewn haphazardly beside her, a book slipping steadily from her fingers. Anna not only realises that this is the first time she has looked so forwardly at her sister in nine years, but also that they’re only six feet apart. She forgets how to breathe.

“Elsa?”

Her tongue curls tentatively around the name, as though seeing her sister like this has made it more precious than ever before. Time, Anna understands, is more precious now than ever too, and as her body remains rooted with shock her mind is frantic. Finally, telling herself to calm down and acclimatise more effectively, Anna lowers herself to her knees as quietly as she can and resolves to learn as much about Elsa as possible before she wakes. Her eyebrows furrow with earnest intention, and she begins with the book in her sister’s lap.

“Faust,” she can read from the cover when she angles herself correctly, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. His name sounds funny (and probably sophisticated) enough to suit Elsa as it is, but Anna’s got to see what’s in it for herself, so she makes a move – first wiping her fingers on her knees, trying feebly to clean them up – and worms the work from Elsa’s already slack grip. Scanning the page, Anna’s heart sinks – it’s in the original German, of bloody course – then makes a spectacular emotional comeback as she spots a series of neat annotations beside one paragraph in particular, delivered by a character that appears to go by the name of Margaret. Elsa has translated it; involuntarily, Anna grins from ear to ear with pride.

“My mother, the whore,

Who has murdered me–

My father, the rogue,

Who has eaten me–

My little sister alone

Picked up every bone,

In a cool place she put them away;

Into a fair bird I now have grown;

Fly away, fly away!”

Anna blinks. The morbidity of this does not quite hit her at first, even as she pauses and reads again and tries to understand. Laying the book open-mouthed to the floor, so that Elsa does not lose her page, she chances a gander through some of the others that are close enough to her sister that she can assume they have been discarded only recently. This time, in what she can only guess is English, she tries “Macbeth,” by William Sh– William Shaek– whatever his name is, and as she really ought to have expected, Elsa seems to be acquainted with a form of English equally as complex as the German she had been browsing before. The predicament of the Lady, however, seems more obvious to Anna than Margaret’s was, even without context.

“Here’s the smell of blood still,” read Elsa’s notes, “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! Oh! Oh!”

The rest of Elsa’s collection is no easier for Anna to decipher. Mr Tolstoy, this time in Russian, tells Anna (with Elsa’s help) how “Kitty blushed with joy and for a long time silently pressed her new friend’s hand, which did not respond to this pressing but lay motionless in her hand. But though her hand did not respond, the face of Mlle Varenka lit up with a quiet, joyful, though also somewhat sad smile, revealing big but beautiful teeth.” Amongst many of Elsa’s other favourites, which fill Anna with a mourning that she can’t quite place, this seems incongruous; it seems different, and yet intrinsically similar. Unable to pull these thoughts together, Anna turns from the texts to her sister’s form.

Yes, this was what she ought to have dedicated her attentions to from the start. Anna frowns and, with Kitty and Varenka fresh on her mind, reaches for Elsa’s hand before she knows what she’s doing. As soon as her own fingers are in inch from her sister’s, she pauses – looks to her face, which remains still – and then braves the gap. Brushing over her knuckles, Anna is not only surprised to find them cold as ice but rough and chafed. Upon further inspection, she sees little red cross-hatches across the back of her sister’s hand, some deeper and darker than others, her skin falling away like leaves from a tree. Elsa hasn’t left the castle for the entire latter half of her life, how can she be so cold? Unease, having only crept the moment “Faust” was in her hands, is making its descent upon Anna speedily now. She holds Elsa’s hand lightly at first, so as not to rouse her, then with more and more strength.

Time is short. Anna moves closer to Elsa, her free hand flirting with her sister’s brow, knotted even in sleep; she chances a stroke of her perfectly trimmed bangs and, in a display of the perhaps reckless bravery for which she is famous, presses her lips to Elsa’s cheekbone. _Stop it_ , she berates, _remember she doesn’t want you around._ So she gathers up her dress and tiptoes away.

In the doorway, Anna pauses, looking back. Traces of her presence are everywhere from the now slick, mottled floor to the books now standing like a series of tents. For a moment, she sees her life in the landscape and wonders if, even the gates were to be opened, she might never be able to cross those acres of longing that stand between her and…

Violently tucking a tuft of strawberry blonde behind her ear, Anna shakes her head and closes the door behind her.


End file.
